Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter

by Lucinda Hawksley

  Josephine was the wife of an academic and church minister, George Butler, who was as passionate about his wife’s causes as she was. Together they sought to fight injustice and to make people of their own social class aware of what was really happening in the world outside their comfortable homes. They campaigned for the abolition of slavery, they set up homes for ‘friendless’ women (sex workers, women who had lost their reputation and women who had become pregnant outside of marriage) – and even invited such usually shunned women into their own home, offering them a safe refuge and practical help to get their lives back on track. They fed the homeless and ill and worked tirelessly with prostitutes and single mothers. Much of their zeal was fed by the Butlers’ own great sadness: the death of their six-year-old daughter in 1863, following a tragic accident (she died after falling down the stairs at their house).

  At the time that Princess Louise contacted her, Josephine was involved in a cause that would bring her, her husband and their followers notoriety. In 1864, 1866 and 1869 Britain had passed three frighteningly misogynist laws: the Contagious Diseases Acts. In effect, these laws enabled the police to sexually assault any prostitute – or any woman they suspected of being a prostitute – in any of the towns named in the Acts. The Acts were concerned with protecting the sexual health of naval and military men (those of a lower rank were not allowed to marry while in service) and as such were enforced mainly in port and military towns. Women could be arrested and then forcibly examined for sexually transmitted diseases and if they were found to be contagious, they could be locked up. The examinations were supposed to be carried out by medical men, but many of the women detained complained that the police had carried out such ‘inspections’ themselves, forcing the women to strip and be ‘examined’. Prostitution was one of the great social evils of Victorian England – seldom spoken of but always present. Prostitutes were seen as the greatest threat to family life; it was not only unmarried soldiers and sailors who were using their services – the number of wives infected with venereal diseases brought to the marital bed by their husbands was a serious medical issue. Refusing to accept that the problem actually originated with with the men who used the prostitutes, the Acts were worded in such language to imply that it was female prostitutes who threatened the fabric of English society – and not the men who paid them.

  Louise must have realised how controversial her involvement in Josephine’s work to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts would be, but naïvely she hoped that, now aged 21, she would be allowed more autonomy in her decisions. It was a false hope. Despite her great admiration for Josephine Butler’s work, she was forced by her mother to renege on her promise to help. Almost every member of her family, including the usually supportive Bertie, was outraged by Louise’s decision to become involved with such a scandalous cause. She was eventually outwitted by the fact that Josephine’s work was political: as a royal, she was not supposed to take sides.2

  Unable to stand up against the full force of her family, Louise reluctantly returned Josephine’s book. Unknown to her family, however, Louise continued to maintain her friendship with Josephine; as she always had to do with ‘unsuitable’ friends, she impressed upon Josephine the great importance that the queen should never find out.

  Queen Victoria believed that she knew every aspect of her children’s lives, but in reality she had turned most of her children into wily, practised liars, adept in the art of subterfuge. Marie Adeane, one of the queen’s maids of honour in the 1880s, later described Louise as a consummate liar – unaware that it was a skill Louise and her siblings had been forced to adopt and one that became second nature. Josephine Butler and Louise also corresponded about the education of women and about the journal Josephine wanted to found, the International Women’s Review. Louise responded with her concerns about the journal having the word ‘Women’ in the title, as she feared it would put men off buying it: ‘I think all appearance of exclusiveness should be avoided as it is after all only with the cooperation of the cleverest men that we can hope to succeed … I know the subject of women’s rights, interests etc. has become so tedious to the eyes of so many, whose support it would be an advantage to gain.’

  Louise had also gone to a great effort to contact, in secret, Elizabeth Garrett, who was determined to be Britain’s first female doctor. She had heard that Elizabeth had attempted to attend medical students’ classes while she was training as a nurse, but the male medical students protested about the presence of a female in their classes and she was banned. Undeterred, she sat the exam – and passed. The Society of Apothecaries immediately made moves to ensure women were banned from sitting the exam in future. By the time Louise met her, Elizabeth had decided she would go to France, where she would be able to qualify as a doctor. Louise contacted her and went to meet her – on the strict instructions that the queen should not find out. The visit was not a formal one in any sense: Louise simply turned up unexpectedly at the young medical student’s house (and discovered her hanging wallpaper), and talked to her eagerly about her studies. Later Louise wrote to Josephine Butler about their meeting: ‘it was a great pleasure to find her so enthusiastic in her work … she is one of those who can prove how much women can learn, if they put their whole heart, and soul, in what they are about’.

  Louise had underestimated her mother’s spy network – the visit was discovered and the queen was furious. She believed that women had no right to become doctors and was shocked that her daughter now appeared to be sanctioning such behaviour. People such as the progressive Garrett family and their talented and driven daughters were anathema to the queen, not least because they were strong supporters of one of her least favourite subjects: equal rights for men and women. In defiance of her mother, Louise kept in touch with the doctor, later sending Josephine Butler a note with the words ‘I send you a letter from Miss Garrett on her successful examination at Paris.’ After Elizabeth Garrett returned to London, she established the New Hospital for Women and campaigned, successfully, for women to be allowed to enter the medical profession.3 She and Louise remained in contact.

  Episodes such as these brought Louise to full awareness that she needed to escape her mother’s house. Her pleas to be allowed to live in her own studio and work as a sculptor were never going to be recognised. The only way Louise would ever achieve any form of independence would be if she married – and if she chose someone less overbearing than Vicky’s or Alice’s husbands. Lady Ely summed up the problem that all Queen Victoria’s children encountered: ‘[there are] struggles going on with Alice and Louise and others. The general tenor of which seems to be they want to do what they like not what the Q likes and want her to pay for doing what they like, while she is ready to pay if they will do what she likes.’ It was stalemate. Just as her mother was doing, Louise began to look for acceptable suitors. Had Louise not been a princess, she would have had no shortage of offers. She possessed the type of looks that many Victorian men idealised: a trim but curvaceous figure, blue eyes and long, curling fair hair. The artist Edwin Landseer commented, ‘If I were a young man, I should not rest until that lovely girl had promised to marry me.’ Thomas Carlyle described her as ‘decidedly a very pretty lady, and clever too’. Unfortunately for Louise, there were very few men who were eligible enough to be considered a suitable husband for a princess.

  The fact that Louise would soon marry does nothing to quash the belief that she was having an affair with Boehm. Both she and Boehm knew she had no choice. Had the situation been reversed – had it been a single man in a relationship with a married woman – things would have been different; in Victorian England a single man was envied as a carefree bachelor; a single woman was an embarrassment. An unmarried princess was unimaginable – every member of the royal household had been keeping an eye on potential suitors almost since the moment of her birth. Louise had to marry – and it would be far better for both her and Boehm if she exerted some will over the decision. Just because Boehm was in no position to marry her di
d not mean he could not be her lover. They also recognised that, as a married woman no longer living under her mother’s roof, Louise would have more freedom. She was already known to be Boehm’s private pupil, so their meetings would arouse no comment from the papers or their families. This made conducting a relationship far easier than it would have been for most illicit couples of the time.

  CHAPTER 11

  A controversial betrothal

  The frivolity of the newspapers in speaking of France as if she were a child to be whipped or a blackguard to be flogged has been base. Does not this threatened siege of Paris rather recall the words of Christ weeping over Jerusalem? And must we not suppose Him, in human figure of speech, ‘weeping’ far more over that ‘great city’ Paris?

  Florence Nightingale, September 1870

  At the end of 1869, Alix safely gave birth to her third daughter, Princess Maud of Wales (who would grow up to marry King Haakon VII of Norway). This was not, however, the only piece of royal news that was being discussed. People in the know were gossiping about a visit paid to the queen by two of her subjects, the Duke and Duchess of Argyll.1 The two families had been friendly for many years, but it was understood by members of the royal household that the duke and duchess were there to talk about the possibility of marrying their eldest son, the Marquess of Lorne (and future 9th Duke of Argyll; known in the Campbell family as ‘Ian’), to Princess Louise. The royal family was immediately divided. When the engagement was finally announced (many months ahead at this stage) the papers would make a great deal of it being ‘a love match’, but, in reality, this was an engagement that was as carefully brokered as any business arrangement and one that was not decided on without a great deal of angst and argument. Amongst those members of the family who needed to be convinced that such an engagement was a good idea was Louise herself and it would take some time, and a great deal of prevarication on the part of the bride, before the marriage could be announced.

  Initially, Louise was intrigued by her mother’s plan. Lorne was a very good-looking young man and he was different from and less formal than most of her suitors. These were attractive qualities to her, but soon she began deliberating, and this deliberation went on for the best part of a year. She confessed to her mother that she did not like him ‘enough’. She did, however, form an attachment to the Duke of Argyll, Lorne’s father, and she seems to have fallen in love with the very idea of the Argylls and their approach to family life, which was so different from her own experience. She had envied Sybil Grey, Caroline Lyttelton and Horatia Stopford for their uncomplicated and privileged family lives, and now she recognised that she was being given the chance to enter a similar family, where she could have the chance to be herself. Yet something still prevented her from saying yes.

  Discussion of Louise’s future was taking place at a time when tension was rife within the royal family. The year 1870 saw the start of the Franco-Prussian War – a conflict that split the royal family in two. Bertie and Alix – together with Alix’s native Denmark and the majority of Britain – were fiercely loyal to France. Vicky’s situation was appalling: married to the Crown Prince of Prussia, she was wife and mother to the next heirs to the throne, and as such was forced to be on the opposite side to the rest of her family. She did have an ally, however: Queen Victoria.

  Although the queen had to pretend to be impartial, her pro-Prussian feelings were apparent to those who knew her – and to a large percentage of the sceptical newspaper-reading public. To Vicky, the queen wrote that she had to appear neutral, but ‘My whole heart and fervent prayers are with beloved Germany! Say that to Fritz – but he must not say it again.’ Bertie and Alix were aware of her allegiance and the situation within the family was quarrelsome and often explosive.

  As the war escalated, however, even the queen, who had in the early months called the French position ‘unjustifiable’, began to realise what atrocities the Prussians were carrying out. From that time, her journal starts to reveal a sense of the queen’s anger against Prussia. The Emperor and Empress of France had always been kind and hospitable to Queen Victoria and she felt a responsibility towards them. She tried to reason with the Queen of Prussia, writing in August 1870, ‘This frightful bloodshed is really too horrible in Europe in the 19th century.’ When France was forced to surrender, the Empress and her son fled to England and the protection of Queen Victoria.

  Louise, inspired by the example of Florence Nightingale, wanted to volunteer as a nurse during the war and go out to the battlefields to attend to the wounded, but she was thwarted by her royal status, again. For some time she had been deliberating over whether or not to marry Lorne or one of the other suitors her mother had suggested. Perhaps the queen’s refusal to let her do anything useful during the war helped to tip the balance in favour of Louise agreeing to marriage.

  In Britain, 1870 was to witness the beginning of a new era for women, with the passing of two vitally important new pieces of legislation. These were the first Married Women’s Property Act and the Education Act. There was still a long way to go, but these two Acts of Parliament, concerned with women’s rights and the rights of children, were some of the first significant steps towards equality. Louise was desperate to be a part of the new order – and as a married woman, rather than a spinster stay-at-home princess, she knew she would have more chance of achieving her goal.

  Throughout 1870, Louise made a number of public appearances and the papers loved to comment on the clothes she wore and her artistic sense of style. She was the ‘poster girl’ for the royal family and as speculation mounted in the papers about her future, reports began to be leaked that Louise did not want to leave England, that she had refused to marry a foreigner, that she would only marry a ‘Britisher’. The public loved her even more for this. The Prince and Princess of Wales were expected to attend a great number of social functions, but on the regular occasions when Alix was indisposed (her health was often poor as she was suffering from severe rheumatism and a hearing problem), Louise would attend official functions with Bertie. When the siblings appeared together for Bertie to open the new Thames Embankment in 1870, the crowds were ecstatic.

  Thwarted in her intention to become a nurse, Louise threw her wartime energies into fund-raising and opening bazaars and fairs. She was also starting to gain confidence in her art, and when the New British Institution Gallery held its Winter Exhibition of 1870 – an exhibition of watercolours, with profits going to war relief work – Louise was one of the contributors. Interestingly, according to the National Art Library’s archives, so was Vicky; it is strange to think that Vicky was sending her paintings to be exhibited in aid of war relief when her husband’s family was responsible for the war itself.

  Although Louise was now intending to become a wife, her mind was by no means made up as to who would be her husband. In March 1870, the Marquess of Lorne was told an engagement was not going to take place; Louise had changed her mind. As the queen wrote to Lord Granville on 13 March, ‘while the Princess thinks Lord Lorne very clever and agreeable, she does not think she could have that feeling for him which would enable her to wish for any nearer acquaintance with a view to a further result. He is too young for her…’

  The ending of her putative engagement to Lorne does not seem to have caused Louise much heartache. Soon afterwards, she was at a breakfast party hosted by the Gladstone family and Lady Lucy Cavendish noted in her diary, ‘Sat by Princess Louise who looked very pretty and was charming and well-mannered as usual.’ Rumours now suggested Lord Cowper as the princess’s intended fiancé. At the start of October, however, all mention of Lord Cowper was at an end and the newspapers were about to get the story they’d been longing for. When the royal family was at Balmoral, Lorne arrived to stay. Within a few days of his arrival, the queen announced her daughter’s engagement. The proposal had been carefully stage-managed by the monarch. Despite her later fiction that the marriage was a true love match and Louise would have no other husband than the future 9th Duke of
Argyll, the ladies of the court recalled many years later that when Louise heard that Lorne had been invited to visit Balmoral she cried on and off for several days and, to those she trusted, confided that everything was ‘so hard’.

  On the day that Louise became engaged to be married, 3 October 1870, a small walking party set out with the promise of a good high tea at the end of their walk. The party included Lady Ely (a lady of the bedchamber and one of Queen Victoria’s most trusted advisors), Lord Hatherley (the Lord Chancellor), Princess Louise and the Marquess of Lorne. The queen, Princess Beatrice and other members of the party joined the walkers for tea – but they arrived, and left, by carriage. Louise and Lorne were both very fond of the outdoors, although he was less entranced by physical activity than Louise. When Louise thought of being outdoors, she thought of energetic walking or riding; Lorne was more content to be an observer. A year after their marriage, she would write to Lorne’s mother, ‘I make him walk as much as I can’, but she admitted that she was seldom successful.